Robert Pence

Quite a contrast! Looks like a delightful escape.

Beautiful stuff. Dayton has some wonderful areas that an out-of-towner isn't likely to just stumble across. In Chicago, Rogers Park has some very nice courtyard apartments from the twenties/thirties, too. The walk along Jarvis between Sheridan and Jarvis Beach is pretty sweet.

Dayton has an extensive system, the only electric trolley buses in Ohio, or in the midwest, for that matter.

Mostly I run at 1024x768 on a 21-inch ViewSonic G225fB (graphic arts CRT). It's comfortable for my eyes and lets me view most sites with minimal scrolling. Maximum resolution for my display adapter and monitor is 2048x1536 but I'd never had any reason to go that high. I just tried it, and it's quite sharp and crisp and I'm not detecting any noticeable flicker. Even with the font size set to "extra large" text is pretty hard on my eyes at normal viewing distance, though.

Amazing places and beautiful pics!

Very nice! Not at all what I often hear about Springfield. I think this one is cute as a button. It's an unusual amalgam of styles, and I love that porch.

I'm a big fan of Diane Rehm. I always appreciate the quality of the discussion and her skill at keeping things civil and constructive. This is the first time I've ever turned off her show, even though it's a topic that's among my strongest interests. Even knowing what Randall O'Toole is about doesn't make listening to him any less annoying, and I was reaching the point where I was about to start yelling at the radio.

That's like saying, "Please use crack responsibly." :roll: :laugh:

In the summer of '79 on a weekend visit to Cleveland, I neglected to top off my tank on Friday night or Saturday. On Sunday I had a heck of a time finding a gas station that was open, and for a while I thought I was going to have to wait until Monday to head back to Fort Wayne. That time around, there was talk of reenacting Sunday blue laws (no retail) to curb fuel use.

A recent AP article that ran in various Indiana newspapers; I picked up this excerpt from examiner.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NW Ind. drivers choose cars over trains despite gas costs Jun 9, 2008 1:49 PM (2 days ago) AP » 2 days ago: NW Ind. drivers choose cars over trains despite gas costs « Map data ©2008 Tele Atlas - Terms of UseMapSatelliteHybrid # 1,357 of 7,069 Filed under: HAMMOND, Ind. , Still Driving HAMMOND, Ind. (Map, News) - The recent spike in gasoline prices hasn't led to an increase in northwest Indiana drivers parking their cars and taking South Shore commuter rail on weekdays. Overall ridership on the South Shore is down 0.6 percent this year as compared with 2007, although weekend and holiday ridership is up 6.6 percent, according to Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District figures. http://www.examiner.com/a-1432290~NW_Ind__drivers_choose_cars_over_trains_despite_gas_costs.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The article does note that ridership increased 10.7 percent during Dan Ryan Expressway reconstruction, and doesn't quite completely obscure the statement by a South Shore spokesperson that most of those new riders kept riding even after the expressway reopened. It doesn't mention that between Van Buren Station and Hammond weekday peak trains are running at or beyond capacity both inbound and outbound, with many passengers standing for that half-hour segment. Overcrowding is a disincentive for commuters who have an alternative, and there is currently no additional equipment that could be pressed into service. Fourteen new bi-level gallery cars are on order, with the first ones scheduled for delivery in November 2008. It's reasonable to expect that when the new cars go into service and relieve overcrowding, ridership figures will see another increase.

More efficient personal vehicles aren't a real solution because the problem is bigger than energy cost or consumption. Car-dependency wastes land by fostering bad land-use policies. It leads to paving surfaces and interfering with natural drainage while fouling watersheds with parking lot runoff. It disperses essential goods and services so that they can't efficiently be connected via public transportation with the places where people live, especially people who can't or don't drive or who can't afford newer, more efficient, reliable automobiles. The bigger issues are environmental stewardship and social justice. In that context, the current frenzy over gas costs is a red herring. Edit: "Selfish" doesn't really describe it. Americans are spoiled; we've become so used to self-indulgence that we think we're entitled to it.

And eliminate all traces that he ever did that, before he takes it in because the transmission blew or something else broke "in-warranty"!

Great photos! Looks like an interesting town; I'll have to check it out someday.

AKA hedge apples. Something eats them; I used to find them on the ground at Ouabache State Park near Bluffton (IN), and sometimes they were half-eaten. Either some native fauna likes them, or there's a heretofore undiscovered population of Giant Land Sloths lurking in the forest at the park. The last time I looked for some, DNR had cut down the Osage Orange grove that I knew about, near the base of the fire tower. Oops! A moderator took this thread off-topic and I followed blindly. I blame his charismatic leadership. :-D

Chicago to Milwaukee makes a nice Amtrak ride; the station is right downtown and within easy walking distance of the best-known attractions. I think there are five daily round trips, now, and they run on time.

Summer in the city! Looks like an interesting ride and an interesting place.

Beautiful photos! San Francisco is an amazing city, and you're right about the hike up to Coit Tower; the views are some of the best in the city.

Beautiful shots! Historic cabins have a wonderful smell from the raw aged wood and the wood smoke from the fireplace that has permeated everything over the years. I've never slept on a rope bed, but my dad's mother did when she was young. The mattress was a sack made of heavy cotton, stuffed with corn husks, and it was supported on a criss-cross lattice of rope woven through holes in the bed frame. I suppose you wouldn't notice if you'd been awakened before sunup and done hard physical work 'til dusk.

Those folks' lives wouldn't be very pleasant compared with what we're used to now, but that was what they were familiar with, and some of them probably thought they had it pretty good compared with what they might have left in an old country. With the population density and local merchants living in or above their shops, I'll bet a very large percentage of the people in the photo knew or at least recognized each other on the street. There probably was a sense of community there. Beautiful photo.

In Fort Wayne there was a guy with a van who used to make the rounds of the poor neighborhoods and senior housing complexes and sell produce. He did a pretty brisk business until his source became known; he went around the supermarkets at night and raided the dumpsters for the stuff they were pitching. Good food does go to waste by being discarded because of expiration dates, but the stuff he was picking up had been out of refrigeration for several hours and in some cases wasn't safe for human consumption.

No, driving slow in the left lane is a favorite past time of Americans. I see it all over the country and it is pet peeve of mine. When I was a young whippersnapper, I never understood why old geezers thought they had to tie up traffic by driving slow. Now that I'm an old geezer, I realize we do it to p!ss off the young whippersnappers!

Neat stuff. Community gardens would be a good use for a lot of vacant city land, especially where it's close to folks with limited transportation who could save money on food by growing their own.

Beautiful-looking trail! I have some ideas for reforming taggers.

Gorgeous places!

I may have posted this someplace before, but I stumbled across it while rescanning a bunch of old negatives to update my web site. The photo is from 1990, but it evokes '70s iconic gay imagery; Marlboro Man with a rope sizing up muscular Greek god with a truck.